


You Make the Death in Me

by Schwoozie



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Gen, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 05:55:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4089499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schwoozie/pseuds/Schwoozie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The news of her father's death arrives in Savannah moments after Abigail does, and the first place she goes after stepping from the carriage is to confession.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Make the Death in Me

**Author's Note:**

> So. This was supposed to be the beginning of an AsheVane story. And I believe it still will be. But I think it also works as a standalone piece, which is why, for now, I am publishing it as a one shot.
> 
> Warnings for blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to rape.
> 
> Reviews are love :)

_**when death reached out its hand,  
** _ _**you should have cowered** _

_\- anita o[.](http://alonesomes.tumblr.com/post/95895581666/when-death-reached-out-its-hand-you-should-have)_

* * *

The news of her father's death arrives in Savannah moments after Abigail does, and the first place she goes after stepping from the carriage is to confession.

She has not been to confession since she left England, and of all the trials she faced on her journey across the seas, it is this that sits the least well with her. She is not so naïve as to think that God would punish her for failing to seek out a pastor—there must be pastors on that island, mustn't there? They can't all be as godless as the world would lead her to believe, and it has led her to believe so much that was not true—but there is a disquiet in her soul that cannot be healed with contemplation alone.

It is not, of course, confession in the Catholic sense that she seeks. Father detests Catholics with nearly the same vitriol as he does the pirates; she suspects he would hang them too, if the law allowed it.

(It stops her breath, the first time she realizes she cannot think of her father in the present tense anymore.)

So no, she does not seek a booth in some gilded palace, as Father would call it. And it is not forgiveness she seeks, not altogether. But she is lonely. Has always been lonely. And there is something in the quiet of a church—its intention as a building of the soul, not of the body—that does not cure her loneliness, no; but neither does it condemn it. It allows it to exist, uncontested, unabashed. She needs that now, she feels, now that the last people on Earth to love her are in the ground.

The carriage driver wants to take her to Christ Church, but she insists on something smaller. They end up on the edge of the city—the back of the church abuts a plantation and the short path from the road to the building is half-overgrown. The structure itself seems on the verge of toppling. Abigail thinks that it must have stood here since the first colonists claimed this land as their own. Little else could account for the way it leans against its foundations, the smell of rotten wood as she ascends the creaking steps. The driver insists on seeing her to the door, but after this she asks him to leave her be. She will continue on alone.

The inside is larger than the outside made it seem, but it is still the smallest house of worship Abigail has ever set foot in. And yet—pausing in the entry way, looking down the plainly-wooded aisle at the crude carving of the crucifixion hanging above the pulpit—Abigail feels small. Startlingly small, even for one who all her life has felt so little. There is a power in this place that the grandest meeting hall could not match, she thinks; a truth to its planks of wood, the plain, haggard heads bowed along its pews. There are only a few of them, and none look up when she enters, although her shoes are loud on the creaky floor. She stands still for several minutes, sweat sticking her dress to her skin and the noise of a horsefly's wings buzzing loudly in the small room, before she thinks to seek out the pastor.

She finds him in a cramped office off the main room—a balding, grumpy looking man who looks her over with contempt before jerking his head. It takes her several moments to realize he is prompting her to speak, and she tries to rush all the words out at once, lips tangling and tongue tripping over itself until he cuts her off with a roll of his eyes.

“You wish to confess?”

She nods.

He pries himself from his chair to find her her own, shutting the door behind her with an aggravated click.

The small room is stifling, and while the pastor's back is turned Abigail plucks at the soaked collar of her dress, longing, suddenly, for the cool tropical breezes of Nassau. She thinks this just as the pastor drops into his own seat, and it cannot endear her to him, the way the thought strikes her dumb—that she would miss anything of that place where she faced such horror; where she was kept sedated like an animal, starved, left to watch while her governess—

Abigail's chest heaves with the weight of memory, the rotten wood of the church suddenly the salt-swept caverns of Low's hold, the heavy air scented with stolen tobacco and cotton. The pastor seems almost concerned now—quite against his will, but concerned nonetheless, and it is his distress that quiets Abigail's own.

“I apologize,” she says in her small voice, once she can speak. “I have been through... I don't believe I am well.”

“What's wrong, then?” the pastor asks, leaning back until his chair creaks. He seems marginally less bored by her, which she suspects is an improvement. But still, she pauses, and a fresh flicker of annoyance crosses his face. “Spit it out.”

And Abigail would—as she felt when Mr. McGraw gave her the diary, she feels the words inside of her like water sloshing inside a hull, seeking only the tiniest crack to seep from—but she does not know where to begin. How can she, and to a man so disinterested? Yet somehow, his disinterest calms her. He does not want her here. He will not pretend with her, to appease her feelings. He will tell her the truth, as God gives it to him.

“I feel I used to know,” she says, then pauses, looks at her hands in her lap, looks up again. “I feel I used to know,” she says more strongly, “what is right and what is wrong. Mother and Father said it so simply. That if I were good and faithful and obedient, then God would take care of me, and those I love. That there are laws, which govern our universe. That there is dark and there is light, which God created to always defeat the dark.” Abigail shakes her head, hands twisting. “But I do not... I do not know now. What has happened to me, it is... I do not believe I am the person I was.”

The pastor looks nearly intrigued, now; is squinting at her, sweat trickling down his temples.

“What happened to you?” he asks.

Abigail takes several moments to deliberate her response, and he does not even twitch.

“I was a captive,” she says, “and good people rescued me. And I know they are good, I do. Although I would not have thought so, had I not experienced these things.” Abigail looks out the pastor's small window, barely large enough to stick one's head through. The fields of green ripple with the breeze, almost like the surface of the sea. For a moment it it seems as if the floor is pitching. “I always believed it was simple. There were monsters, and there were men. Do you believe that?”

“It is what the Bible teaches.”

“But how can it be true?” Abigail asks, leaning forward until her chest hovers over the desk. “How can it... the people who saved me, they have killed people. One of them killed my father. And yet, it was done in response to an offense that required nothing less than that.”

The pastor's attention seems fully trained on her now; he leans forward himself, steepling his fingers. “Murder is never justified.”

“But it is,” Abigail says emphatically. “When one has done so much wrong, when there is nothing but evil in one's heart, ought they not face the same end they brought others to?”

“I thought you said there are no monsters.”

“There are. I believe there are. But I feel now that... that some people can be both. But if that is so... how can you slay a monster that is also a man? Is that not as great a sin as leaving the monster to wreak havoc? And if you find yourself a monster...”

“You believe you are a monster?”

“I have wanted things,” Abigail says softly. “Dreadful things, and yet... I do not feel in the wrong for wanting them. I believe these things are just. And yet all my life, I have been taught otherwise.” Abigail squeezes her hands together. “But I have also been taught to follow my heart, to listen to God's voice inside of me. And He... He does not condemn me for it. He does not even answer me. He says nothing at all.” Abigail blinks, suddenly near tears. “Does He... what does He say to you?”

The pastor exhales, long and loud, and Abigail can smell the meat of his lunch from across the table. “Look, Miss—everyone is a sinner. You're a sinner, I'm a sinner. We have no choice in the matter.”

“But if you follow the laws of reason, of humanity—“

“Then you pretend you ain't for a little bit longer. That's all humanity will bring you.” The pastor rolls his tongue around his mouth, then turns and spits into a small vessel on his desk. “Anyone who says they're a humanitarian is fooling you, fooling themselves, or selling something.” He leans forward, and she can smell his breath again. “Listen—you can probably tell, I ain't too great a pastor. God don't speak to me, never has, probably never will. I drink, been known to whore on occasion; ain't much else to do in this godforsaken colony.” He rolls his eyes again at the plain shock on her face. “You want pretty words, you take yourself back to town.”

“No... no, it's alright.” And it is. It reminds Abigail a little of how the pirates speak, unfettered, and above all, honest. There's a strange sort of contentment in that.

“Just so we're clear,” he says. He clears his throat and sits back again. “All I'll say is this: You feel something, there's a reason for it. God made you the same as He made the world, but He didn't mean for it all to fit together nicely. And maybe it ain't supposed to. You make your peace with that, it'll be that much easier to sleep at night.”

“So... you think God does not want us to fight the monsters? That we must instead accept them?”

“I think there's always a time when God shows his hand, and that's when you choose the wrong path for the right reasons.” The pastor tips his chin, regarding her. “What those reasons are,” he says, “you'll have to find for yourself.”

* * *

It is growing dark, and Abigail does not stay long. She says very little to the pastor when she leaves—he seems disinclined to shake her hand, and she is too distracted to give any memorable farewell.

She is sure he sees when she walks to the collection box and deposits more than he likely collects in a year. She supposes that, in the end, is superior to words.

Mrs. Ashford is nearly frantic by the time Abigail reaches the house, but looking on the lady's stricken face, she does not feel as contrite as she should. She reminds Abigail of Mrs. Hamilton, in some ways—warm and soft, caring, childless and yet more fit to mothering than you might expect of one who has not felt the swelling of her womb.

But this is not Mrs. Hamilton. Mrs. Hamilton lies dead, by as close to her father's hand as is a finger brushing a trigger. And so Abigail walks small and silent as the woman ushers her to her room, helps her into her nightclothes and tucks her into bed, as if she were still the child they all believe her to be.

For all the pastor's words of sleeping easily, Abigail lies awake long into the night. She is not so much thinking as drifting. It reminds her of how she felt when the first of Low's sedative entered her system. She fought it at first, yes; but in a few moment there stole into her a kind of contentment. Whatever was coming next, whatever would happen to her, whatever they would do with her comatose body—she would not be present for it. It would be happening as if to someone else. She could deal with it in the morning.

And so now it is easy to pretend that she is not herself. To dream away the silk of the bedclothes and the sticky heat of the night and imagine herself as she was on the approach to Charles Town—at the rail of a ship, salty wind tangling in her hair and stinging her skin. But it is not Charles Town she sees as she gazes out to sea. What she sees is only blue, streaks of green, clumps of cloud chasing the arc they cut through the ocean. The rigging creaks above her, the sturdy boards below her, the surly shouts of men rise above the crashing waves. Abigail breathes in deep and smells nothing but wind. There are no right paths; there are no wrong ones.

There is only the water.

 


End file.
